 Ken's Women's Champion: Annie Marjoram. Quite possibly the biggest victory the licensed Taxi trade has ever achieved? There can be few other ways of describing Mayor Livingstone’s decision to ban exterior advertising from minicabs. The only signage they can now legally display are passenger name boards such as the ones Dial-a-Cab drivers use. The ban means that companies such as Addison Lee, whose name appears on their back windows, will have to have them removed. The most sensible PH Company has turned out to be Brunel, whose MD Bill Edwards long ago decided to give his cars personalised number plates (BRU ***) rather than plastering BruCars over the vehicle - still possibly irritating to this trade, but worthy of congratulations in its forethought! Just as this article said at the beginning, Call Sign considers it to be a victory for the whole trade but perhaps unsurprisingly, there are those who now suddenly enter the arena and proclaim that the victory was theirs. The LTDA in TAXI claim that it was "spearheaded by the LTDA" and no doubt the T&G will claim likewise in CTN. Call Sign would not have pushed the true claim had it not been for those others who feel the necessity to claim "victory" for any successful negotiations that are carried out on behalf of the trade. That has now happened again. While the LTDA speak of the past two months, Call Sign can go back to December 2002 when in the Chairman’s column, Brian Rice said: "Information has now been leaked that the authorities have a mind to allow advertising on the exterior of the newly privatised Private |
SIGNAGE VICTORY FOR THE TAXI TRADE But Who Was Really Behind It…?
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Hire. This in my view would be extremely
detrimental, not only to the taxi industry, but also to members of the
public. It would make Private Hire easily recognisable to the public and
they would be plying for hire off the street before you could look round! It
would also create a situation where the more unscrupulous members of society
would be in a position to easily fool members of the public just by
displaying advertising on the exterior of their vehicle. Both the foregoing
scenarios are totally unacceptable and exterior advertising must not be
allowed on Private Hire vehicles. I can assure all DaC members that JRTA (LTN)
will do everything it can to prevent exterior advertising on private hire
vehicles." |
Tony McNulty, Maureen Worron (Head of Ground Operations at
Heathrow), Head of the PCO Roy Ellis and various individuals at TfL, he was
representing the radio circuits via their joint organisation London Taxi
Network (formerly known as JRTA). Various members of LTN, at different times, have been in consultation over the possibility of outside signage being displayed on PH vehicles because, as Brian wrote as early as December 2002, it was totally unacceptable. All the above representations and mentions in Call Sign were put there to inform subscribers and none of the LTN members who, since first becoming involved, have sought thanks or praise. However, Call Sign finds it rather sad that some organisations have to try to grab the headlines and make claims that are not necessarily as they seem. There can be no doubt that the LTDA and T&G helped, but perhaps because DaC doesn’t have the need to draw in new members, we can be more impartial and it would be grossly unfair to those members of the London Taxi Network who fought so hard, to allow another organisation to creep in at the end to claim the plaudits… As we said at the beginning, it is a victory for the licensed Taxi trade and no one else… Alan Fisher |
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